Tsebelis G. Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work

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FIGURE 11.6

Integration of Proposals under Cooperation Procedure

-2

-3

SQ’

SQ”

Two-dimensional Euclidean Policy space from König

B-Belgium, DK-Denmark, D-Germany, E-Spain, F-France, GB-Great Britain, GR-Greece,

IR-Ireland, I-Italy, L-Luxembourg, NL-Netherlands, P-Portugal, EP-Parliament, K-Commission,

SQ–Status quo; RE-Results.

SQ’ outcome predicted by Tsebelis (1994). (SQ’ is the outcome unanimously accepted since GB

is indifferent between it and SQ)

SQ’’ outcome predicted by Moser (1996) and Crombez (1996) and Steunenberg (1994) (SQ” is

supported by a qualified majority (excluding GB, IR, and E who control 21 votes) since P is

indifferent between it and SQ and all other countries prefer it over SQ).

König, Thomas Europa auf dem Weg zum Mehrheitssystem. Gründe und Konsequenzen

nationaler und parlamentarischer Integration Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag 1997.

p. 189

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CONCLUSIONS

This book introduced a new framework for the analysis of political institutions. While

each of the claims made in particular chapters may have existed already (some of them, as I

showed in the introduction, for centuries or even millennia), the combination provides a different

view of institutional analysis. The areas of application of veto player theory are so diversified in

terms of traditional institutional analysis (different regimes, parties and party systems, federal

and unified countries) and in terms of subject areas (lawmaking, bureaucracies, judiciary,

government selection and duration) that I was able to test an intellectually consistent set of

predictions across many different situations and provide several pieces of evidence to

corroborate the theory.

Veto player theory focuses on legislative politics, and how lawmaking decisions are

made, in order to explain a series of policies, and other important characteristics of democracies.

Its advantage is that it traces the lawmaking process closely, so that its expectations are more

likely to be accurate than existing typologies. For example, instead of asking the traditional

questions about regime type, party system, types of parties etc., it focuses at the interaction

between the lawmaking institutions, the veto players. The questions I address are:

1. Who are the veto players? That is, who are the actors whose agreement is necessary for

a change in the status quo? How many exist? What are their locations? Is any one of them

located in the unanimity core of the others, in which case the absorption rule applies (i.e. a veto

player does not “count” because he does not affect outcomes?

2. How do these veto players decide? Are they single individuals or collective? Do they

require simple majority, or qualified majority, or unanimity? Do they decide by a combination of

the above (like EU institutions)? In each one of these cases how is the set of possible outcomes

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affected? Do they have stable or shifting internal coalitions? And how do these features affect

the winset of the status quo?

3. How do veto players interact? Do we know a specific sequence of moves in which case

we can restrict the set of outcomes; or do we only know that an agreement among them is

necessary, and therefore, we have no grounds to select one particular point of the winset of the

status quo over another?

Answering these questions provides significant insights in the lawmaking process and its

outcomes, as well as other structural features of different political systems. I will come to them

shortly, but first let me address how standard questions and classifications introduced in the

literature relate to these questions.

Regime types differ in terms of their veto players’ configuration: presidentialism and

parliamentarism differ in terms of the number of institutional veto players, as well as who and

how much controls the legislative agenda. Federal and unitary countries also differ along the

number of institutional veto players. Multiparty coalitions and single party governments differ in

the number of partisan veto players. Strong and weak parties differ in terms of their party

cohesion. All systems differ in terms of the distance among veto payers, which affects policy

stability.

However, while each one of the standard questions in the literature translates into some

feature of veto players, this translation is not direct and straightforward. As I explained in

Chapter 6 the same institutions may have different results on the veto player configuration of a

country: referendums may increase (usually) or decrease (if both triggering and asking the

question are prerogatives of the same player) the number of veto players. Executive decrees may

decrease (usually) or increase (France) the number of veto players, or may simply alter the

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distances among them. However the major reason why institutions cannot be directly translated

into statements about veto players is the “absorption rule” that I introduced in Chapter 1. A veto

player located in the unanimity core (the Pareto set) of other existing veto players is absorbed,

that is, does not alter policy decision-making. A second chamber or a president with veto powers

controlled by the same parties, as the government is not going to make a difference if the parties

are cohesive, but it might make if they are not. A party located between other parties of a

coalition in the left right dimension will not have an impact on legislation in this dimension, but

it might have if legislation encompasses many different dimensions, etc. In fact the veto players

analysis shows why just counting institutions without looking at their preferences, or assuming

policy spaces to be single dimensional when they are multidimensional, or assuming that a

country falls in one category (say multiparty system) when the composition of the government

changes from a single party government to a multiparty coalition, might produce misleading or

wrong results.

Because of its attention to the legislative process veto players theory can make accurate

predictions about policy outcomes as a function of who controls the agenda, who the veto players

are, and the rules under which they decide. In addition, it provides explanations about the

relationship between the legislative process and other structural features of a democratic polity,

like the role of judges and bureaucrats, or government stability (in parliamentary systems) and

regime stability in presidential ones.

In terms of specific predictions the theory can identify expected outcomes quite

accurately when the positions of all veto players, the agenda setter and the status quo are

identified and known by all actors (perfect information). Indeed, as we saw in Chapter 11 the

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agenda setter can select among the feasible outcomes the one that he prefers the most as long as

he makes the relevant actors indifferent between the status quo and his own proposal.

However, most often the identity or the preferences of the agenda setter are not known.

Veto playes theory responds by identifying the set of all possible outcomes, the winset of the

status quo, and expects actors to make inferences from the size of this set. For example, in

parliamentary systems it is not clear who controls the agenda inside the government. As a result

the predictions of veto players theory without this agenda setting information are not as sharp as

other theories (for example bargaining theories among different actors (Baron and Ferejohn,

Baron, Tsebelis and Money, Huber and McCarty), or situations where most of the decision-

making power is supposed to reside with one particular actor (like the prime minister (Huber,

Strom) or the corresponding minister (Laver and Shepsle), neither can they be as objectionable

or controversial as the above. Similarly in presidential systems, the congress makes a proposal to

the president, but the Congress’ proposal depends usually on the compromise striken in a

bicameral legislature.

In the absence of such knowledge, veto palyers theory provides the contours of the

possible outcomes on the basis of minimal assumptions: that every veto player will accept only

solutions that it prefers over the status quo. It turns out that this assumption of imprecise identity

or preferences of the agenda setter and veto players insisting upon having outcomes they prefer

over the status quo is quite a good an approximation, so that the policy stability expectations of

veto players theory turn out to be correct. It also turns out that other actors in the system

(governments, bureaucrats, or judges) act upon this expected policy stability.

So, while the initial advantage of veto players theory was the precise mapping of the

legislative process, it turns out that it has additional derivative advantages: The first advantage

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that the assumptions are minimal and not controversial. Indeed, it is very difficult to argue that

rational actors will accept policies that they do not prefer over the status quo unless if one

includes some form of side payments in the analysis. I do not want to argue that such payments

are impossible. If they are introduced as a constant feature of the analysis however, most (if not

all) outcomes become possible, and theories become so all encompassing that are impossible to

be tested.

Another advantage of the veto players theory is that the underlying models are

multidimensional. As a result, I do not apply assumptions that generate median voter outcomes

when such median voters may not exist. In fact, I do not generate equilibria when such equilibria

might not be there. I just claim that any outcome has to be included in the intersection of the

winsets of the different veto players, and study the properties of all these points.

In the theoretical part of this book I started with the simplifying assumption that veto

players are individual decision-makers, and identified the conditions under which they will count

or will be absorbed (proposition 1.2), and the systems that produce more or less policy stability

(proposition 1.4). All the propositions on policy stability were in the form of necessary but not

sufficient conditions. While propositions identifying necessary but not sufficient conditions are

very frequent in the social sciences their methodological implications have not been drawn. In

this book I demonstrate that such propositions lead to expecatations not only about the mean of

the dependent variable (policy staility) but also about its variance (heteroskedasticity). In

chapters 7 and 8 I used the appropriate statistical technique to test both my predictions.

I then expanded the analysis to collective veto players and focused on their decision-

making rules: majority, qualified majority, or unanimity. I demonstrated that most of the time the

qualitative results are not altered if one approximates a collective veto player as if it were an

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individual one, and that this result holds even when we are considering veto players deciding

sequentially (one of them controls the agenda) as opposed to simultaneously.

I applied these simple principles to the important theoretical questions of the comparative

politics literature: regime types, federalism, bicameralism, qualified majorities, parties and party

systems, and referendums. Here are some of the conclusions of this analysis.

While the existing literature differentiates between presidential and parliamentary

regimes, veto players finds a way to unify them and make information about one type of regime

to inform us about what might happen in the other. While most of the literature focuses on the

difference between collaboration and independence of the executive and legislative branches, I

point out the importance of agenda setting and cohesion of veto players. Both these variables

have effect on lawmaking, and in both these variables there is big variation inside each one of the

regimes.

However, not all literature differentiates between presidential and parliamentary regimes.

Arend Lijphart had the sound idea of unifying the study of different regimes by introducing the

variable “executive dominance” and locating most parliamentary systems higher than

presidential ones on this dimension. While I think that Lijphart’s approach has important merits,

the equation of executive dominance with government duration is theoretically untenable, and

empirically weak. I demonstrated that executive dominance depends on government agenda

setting powers, and suggested an exhaustive study on agenda setting powers in both presidential

and parliamentary regimes. Such a study will improve our understanding of politics in both

regimes.

Referendums have been a very controversial institution, with some of the literature

considering them as the essence of democracy, while other authors criticize the lack of

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information of the people, as well as the fact that they might be a means of empowering

particular actors. The veto players theory instead of focusing on the distinction between direct

and indirect democracy, identifies the additional veto player who enters the decision-making

process in countries with referendums (the “public” or some approximation of the median voter

as I demonstrated in Chapter 5), and focuses on the process of agenda setting in order to

understand the properties of different referendum structures. In fact, I have demonstrated that the

different approaches of referendums in the literature are based on extrapolations of different

agenda setting structures: the critics of referendums extrapolate from veto player referendums,

while the supporters are speaking about popular initiatives. I have identified other intermediate

types of referendums, where legislative power is divided between government and opposition,

and where the people are called to decide when such disagreements exist (as in Denmark or

Italy).

Federalism has been associated with bicameralism after the creation of the American

Constitution. However in the past it was associated with qualified majorities. Both institutional

settings (qualified majorities and bicameralism) increase the number of veto players, and lead to

more policy stability. Their difference is that bicameralism leads to the emergence of one

privileged dimension of conflict, while qualified majorities protect all centrally located policies.

The theoretical debate concerning the two forms of government can be found in the analyses of

Montesqieu and Madison. Today federalism is more frequently associated with bicameralism

than with qualified majorities (although polities like the US and the EU combine both). Qualified

majorities are officially associated with certain important policymaking processes: when

different veto players disagree, or when an issue is of high significance. However as I have

demonstrated qualified majorities are much more pervasive and exist de facto when some parties

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are excluded from decision-making or even when absenteeism in parliament turns simple to

qualified majorities.

The empirical chapters of this book demonstrate that policy stability is in fact related to

veto players not only when one focuses on legislation (that is, legislative instruments), but when

one studies macroeconomic policies (that is, legislative outcomes). Chapters 7 and 8 also

demonstrated that moving from one to multiple dimensions may be necessary depending on the

subject of the study, and that veto players enables research on any number of policy dimensions

(if the data are available). This is a significant improvement over most existing theories which

assume a single dimensional space as a good approximation.

The last part of the book focused on structural differences generated in different

democratic countries because of characteristics of their veto players configuration. In terms of

government duration as well as government composition, veto players shifts the attention from

party systems characteristics to government characteristics. As we saw, the ideological distance

between parties determines who enters government, as well as how long governments last. These

features of parliamentary systems can be explained by interpreting the “status quo” as an

outcome dependent on only on policies adopted but on a series of other events prevailing in the

political environment (shocks) and the veto players theory.

My analysis indicates that governments are formed by veto players located close to each

other, because such veto players will have more points to include in their government program,

but will also be able to face exogenous shocks to the economic or political system. When such

groups of players exist they will form a coalition government, while when party dispersion is

high, minority governments may be the only solution. These minority governments are using the

institutional provisions of government agenda setting more often than other types of government.

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The issue of independence of the judiciary and bureaucracies was also studied on the

basis of veto players. I distinguished between institutional and behavioral independence, and

focused on the second. On the basis of veto players the underlying difference for the role of the

judiciary play in a country is not the common law or civil law tradition, but the number (and

distances) of veto players. Countries with low policy stability will have low judicial

independence, and countries with high policy stability will have more independent judges. I

provided empirical evidence to corroborate this prediction, along with evidence that federal

systems will have more independent judiciary, since these judiciary will be called to adjudicate

between different branches of government. I have a similar expectation for presidential systems,

but no data to investigate it. I demonstrated that judiciary should be an additional veto player

only in cases where there is judicial review, but I also argued that in most of these cases they get

absorbed as an additional veto player because of their mode of appointment.

With respect to bureaucracies I argued that it is easier to test institutional independence

than behavioral independence, because the preferences of the bureaucracy is a necessary

component of the analysis. The only case I found where the literature has been unanimous in

making such an assumption was case of central banks, and for these particular bureaucracies I

provided existing evidence that my expectation of behavioral independence is corroborated.

Finally, a more global assessment of the veto players predictions could be performed on

EU institutions, which change significantly and frequently over time. Veto players theory does

not relay on “appropriate” or “inappropriate” analogies, but replicates the institutional structure

of a polity and studies the policies that it is likely to produce. I demonstrated that the legislative

power shifts with agenda setting, and provided the reasons for over time changes of the

significance of the judiciary and the bureaucracies. I also demonstrated that single dimensional